“To see the
Earth as
it truly is, small and blue and
beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see
ourselves
as
riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness
in the
eternal
cold – brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”Archibald MacLeish, Skull &
Bonesman
(and uncle
of Bruce Dern, for you LC fans), reflecting on the alleged
flight of
Apollo 8

In
the first of this series of posts, I mentioned that the Apollo
story
was
connected to the LaurelCanyon
story by
way of a
facility known as Lookout Mountain Laboratory, the intelligence
community’s
top-secret, state-of-the-art film studio nestled high in the
Hollywood
Hills.
As it turns out, there is another interesting connection as
well:
during the
span of precisely one month, during the infamous summer of 1969,
the LaurelCanyon
and Apollo stories reached a simultaneous climax, of sorts.

On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11, the flight
that
would
allegedly land men on the Moon for the first time, took flight.
Five
days
later, on July 21, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin allegedly
first set
foot on
lunar soil. Three days later, the trio of Apollo astronauts
triumphantly
returned home to a hero’s welcome. Exactly one week later, the
first
letter
from the so-called Zodiac killer was received by authorities.
Eight
days after
that, on the night of August 8, 1969, Sharon Tate and four
others were
slaughtered in Roman Polanski’s BenedictCanyon
home. The next
night, Rosemary and Leno LaBianca were carved up in their Los
Feliz
home. All
of these killings would later be attributed to canyon regular
Charlie
Manson
and his Family. Less than a week after the killings, some of LaurelCanyon’s
premier
bands took the stage at Woodstock
to celebrate the other side of the canyon scene.

It was a time of supreme weirdness, with
extreme
and very
high-profile violence weaving its way through the flower-power
scenes
in both Los Angeles and San Francisco,
while 234,000 miles away, squeaky-clean astronauts who bore
little
resemblance
to members of the Woodstock
generation allegedly beamed back live footage from the Moon.

Anyway, I think when we left off we were
discussing the
highly improbable flight of Apollo 8, the very first manned
launch of a
Saturn
V, which took flight, as I previously mentioned, on the winter
solstice
of
1968. The mighty Apollo spacecraft, which had failed on its last
unmanned
outing, purportedly flew all the way to the Moon, did ten quick
laps
around
Earth’s nearest neighbor, and then flew back home, with every
one of
its
9,000,000 parts performing flawlessly.

Thanks for that was due in part, according
to
the official
Apollo legend, to a band of surfers in Seal Beach. North American
Aviation,
you see, had a bit of
a problem with keeping the liquefied hydrogen and oxygen in the
Saturn
V’s
second-stage from boiling in the Florida
sun. The proposed solution was to insulate the fuel tanks with
honeycomb
insulation, but NASA’s engineers had trouble keeping the
insulation
from
popping back off. The solution to that problem was to hire local
surfers, who,
according to Moon Machines, brought with them a “special
skill
set.”

NASA claimed, by the way, to shoot for
99.9%
accuracy in
the manufacture of its Apollo spacecraft, which shouldn’t have
been a
problem
for a workforce composed of Nazi rocket scientists, bra
seamstresses
and
surfers. Even if that lofty goal had been attained, however,
that would
still
have left 9,000 defective parts per launch vehicle (6,000 if the
figure
of
6,000,000 parts is correct).

The first alleged live broadcast from the
Moon
came during
prime time hours on Christmas Eve, though I’m sure that was just
a
chance
occurrence. The three astronauts allegedly riding aboard Apollo
8
(Frank
Borman, William Anders, and the ever-popular Jim Lovell), in
what was
billed as
a purely spontaneous gesture, took turns reading aloud ten
verses from
the book
of Genesis, which they followed up with: “Good night, good luck,
a
Merry
Christmas and God bless all of you – all of you on the good
Earth.”
Obviously
the Gideon people had thoughtfully left one of their bibles in
the
capsule
sometime before launch.

The impeccable timing of the ‘historic’
Apollo 8
broadcast, reportedly heard by one of every four people on the
planet,
would
set a standard that would be adhered to by all subsequent Apollo
flights. The
very first Moonwalk by Neil and Buzz was broadcast (‘live’ of
course)
at 9:00
PM Eastern time, as though it were a Monday Night Football game.
Prime
time
Moonwalks became a staple of the Apollo program, to such an
extent that
it was
not at all uncommon for the networks to be deluged with
complaints when
a
popular weekly sitcom was preempted for yet another fake ‘live’
Moonwalk.

After the second fake Moon landing, NASA
began
adding
exciting new elements to the Apollo missions to combat public
apathy.
Apollo
13, of course, added the element of danger. Apollo 14 brought us
the
Moon in
Technicolor, with the first color video broadcasts. Apollo 15
kept us
entertained with the addition of a Moon buggy. And Apollo 17
featured
the
first, and only, spectacular night launch of a Saturn V rocket.

Apollo 8 was quickly followed by Apollo 9,
which
was
originally scheduled to lift-off on February 28, 1969, just two
short
months
after the crew of Apollo 8 had splashed down. Luckily, the water
in
Southern
California is a little cold during the winter months and the
waves
aren’t so
good, so the surfers down in Seal
Beach were probably able to put in
lots of
overtime to
meet the demanding production schedule.

Apollo 9 was the first Saturn V flight to
allegedly have a
lunar module stowed away onboard. The mission allegedly featured
the
first
docking maneuvers with, and the very first flight of, a lunar
module,
albeit in
low-Earth orbit rather than in lunar orbit. Apollo 9 was also
allegedly
the
first flight whose crew donned the newly-designed Apollo/Playtex
spacesuits.

All things considered, Apollo 9’s ten-day
flight
in
low-Earth orbit was largely a letdown after the previous crew
had
allegedly
flown all the way to the Moon and back (and done so, like true
cowboys,
without
the new magic suits). There was one very odd thing though, never
mentioned in
the official histories of the space program, that happened
during the
flight of
Apollo 9.

While lounging in the command module,
unencumbered by
spacesuits, gloves and helmets, and with the luxury of being
able to
hold their
NASA-issue cameras in their hands, the crew (James McDivitt,
David
Scott, and
Rusty Schweickart) took photos of each other that are unfocused,
poorly
composed, and not particularly well exposed – which is, of
course,
exactly the
results that one would expect from amateur photographers using
cameras
that
lacked viewfinders.

However, after those very same astronauts
donned
their
suits, gloves and helmets, and then ventured out for a
spacewalk,
making it rather difficult for them to stabilize
themselves (and therefore their cameras), something truly
wondrous and
magical
happened: the crew of Apollo 9 suddenly gained the ability to
shoot
absolutely stunning
compositions that look like they were professionally produced in
a
studio.
Though it’s hard to pick a favorite, the one featuring the
Earth’s
reflection
perfectly framed in one of the actor’s helmet visors is pretty
impressive.

All of the astronauts on future Apollo
missions,
of
course, proved themselves to be exceptional photographers as
well, but
only
when operating under the most difficult of conditions. Neil
Armstrong,
the very
first photojournalist to allegedly work on the Moon, that most
foreign
of
environments, set the bar exceedingly high for all who were to
follow.
HJP
Arnold, considered to be one of the world’s foremost authorities
on
space
photography before his death in June 2006, once said of the film
magazine
allegedly shot by Armstrong:

“That sequence of images on the lunar
surface,
taken
mainly by Armstrong of course with that one camera … That film
probably
I would
say has never, ever been bettered, whether on the Moon or
subsequently.
Almost
every one of those relatively small number of images taken by
Armstrong
appear
to be splendidly composed. You remember the classic face-on
picture of
Aldrin
with his visor reflecting the entire landing scene – the lunar
module,
the
flag, the TV camera, and Armstrong taking the picture, uh,
reflected in
the
visor? It’s a marvelous picture!”

Despite all the acclaim he has received for
his
exploits
as an astronaut, Neil Armstrong clearly has been unjustly denied
recognition of
his astounding abilities as a photographer. Some may argue that
he
clearly was
not playing in the same league as, say, an Ansel Adams, but I
beg to
differ.
Adams created some awe-inspiring work, to be sure, but could he
have
done so
while wearing a spacesuit, gloves and helmet, and with his
camera
mounted to his
chest, and while acclimating himself to an environment that
featured no
air,
greatly reduced gravity, and extreme heat and cold?

I think not.

Speaking of staged photos, by the way, take
a
look at the
photo below, allegedly shot on the Moon by the last men to set
foot
there, the
crew of Apollo 17 (Gene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Jack Schmitt).
It
reminds me
of something I’ve seen before, possibly some type of a symbol,
but I
can’t
quite place it. (For more fun with Apollo images, drop by Jack
White’s
site at http://www.aulis.com/jackstudies_index1.html,
where you will find a more
thorough analysis of photo irregularities than I have seen
anywhere
else.)

Just two months after the return of Apollo
9,
NASA sent
Apollo 10 off to the Moon, with Tom Stafford, John Young and
Gene
Cernan
onboard. The space agency obviously wanted to get the fake
preliminary
flights
out of the way as quickly as possible so as to get on to the
main
event. The
launch pace would slow considerably once the fake landings began
with
the next
flight, Apollo 11, which blasted off just seven weeks after the
return
of
Apollo 10.

Apollo 10, the third manned launch of a
Saturn
V, once
again allegedly went to the Moon, this time with a lunar module
mounted
to the
nose of the command module. The Apollo 10 mission allegedly
included
everything
that later missions would experience short of actually landing
on the
lunar
surface. Once allegedly in lunar orbit, the lunar module was
deployed
and flown
down fairly close to the surface, before returning to and
successfully
docking
with the command and service modules.

Having endured the perilous initial launch,
and
then the
quarter-million-mile flight to the Moon, followed by the
successful
deployment
and flight of the LEM, and having gotten to within pissing
distance of
being
the first men to create those historic first footprints on the
Moon, it
would
naturally have been tempting to ignore mission control and set
down for
a quick
stroll into history. To prevent this, according to the official
mythology, NASA
diabolically short-fueled the LEM for the Apollo 10 mission.

There was, of course, no possibility that
some
unforeseen
circumstances might have necessitated the use of that additional
fuel,
or
necessitated a landing on the Moon, which would have been a bit
of a PR
nightmare for the agency. Walter Cronkite would have had to
break the
news to
the American people: “The crew of Apollo 10 unexpectedly became
the
first men
to set foot on the Moon just moments ago, and we have been
promised
live
footage momentarily. Unfortunately, their spacecraft was
deliberately
short-fueled so they will not be able to make the return flight
to dock
with
the mothership and both astronauts will soon die. This should
make for
some
riveting TV though, so stay tuned.”

The
last of the major Apollo contracts to be awarded was for the
ever-popular lunar
rovers, aka Moon buggies. The initial idea for a lunar
vehicle
is
generally credited to Walt Disney’s favorite Nazi, Wernher von
Braun,
who
envisioned a mobile, pressurized lab weighing some four tons,
capable
of
carrying enough provisions to keep two astronauts alive for up
to two
weeks.
The concept, dubbed MoLab, would have required the launch of a
separate
Saturn
V rocket, so the idea was dropped as being too expensive
(although NASA
seems
to have had a virtually inexhaustible supply of Saturn Vs; when
the
Apollo
program was scrubbed, NASA already had all the hardware built
for
flights 18,
19 and 20 – and had the crews trained as well.)

NASA supposedly gave up entirely on the
idea of
placing a
vehicle on the Moon, but General Motors’ Defense Research
Laboratories
purportedly soldiered on, putting the company’s own money into
research
and
development of the vehicle. As the story goes, NASA told the
team at GM
that if
they could somehow come up with a way of fitting an operational
vehicle
into an
impossibly small lunar module equipment bay, the agency might
consider
incorporating the vehicle into future Apollo missions.

Speaking of the lunar modules, by the way,
I
happened to
stumble across the photo below of the LEM’s mighty descent
engine,
which, as
can be clearly seen, would have hardly taken up any room at all
in the
spacious
spacecraft’s descent stage. Its fuel tanks wouldn’t have
required much
space
either, so there should have been plenty of room left to stow a
folding
dune
buggy in a curiously empty equipment bay.

Below is a NASA-approved image of the rover
folded up and
ready to pack into its assigned equipment bay, along with a
photo of
the folded
rover allegedly stowed away on a LEM that has clearly seen
better days.
And
here is a brief video
clip of the deployment
of the folded rover being demonstrated, presumably at the
manufacturing
plant.

As can be clearly seen, particularly in the
video clip,
the rover, as initially deployed, was far from complete. It
seems to be
missing
such things as a floor pan, and seats, and cameras, and
antennae, and
battery
packs, and various other components – which raises a few
questions,
such as
where were all the other rover parts stowed? How many empty
equipment
bays were
available to accommodate all the various rover components? And
how long
exactly
did it take the astronauts, given the limitations imposed by
their
suits and
gloves, to deploy and fully assemble a Moon buggy?

GM’s crafty R&D team, led by project
manager
Sam
Romano and chief engineer Ferenc Pavlics, supposedly came up
with the
innovative folding rover concept in less than a month, and, in
July of
1969, as
Armstrong and Aldrin were allegedly taking man’s first steps on
the
Moon, GM
was awarded the contract to design and build the rovers. GM
quickly
teamed with
Boeing and got to work, with two significant challenges to
overcome –
the rover
must fit into the assigned bay, and the total weight was to be
kept to
a
maximum of 400 pounds. Also, the team had to move from concept
drawings
to
mission-ready rover in just 17 months.

As with all other aspects of the Apollo
program,
those
lofty goals proved surprisingly easy to achieve. By early 1971,
GM and
Boeing
had already delivered their first mission-ready rover to NASA
for final
testing
and approval. On July 31, 1971, just two years after the
contract had
been
awarded, what remains to this day the only manned vehicle to
allegedly
land on
an extraterrestrial body began kicking up Moon dust.

The finished product looked not unlike an
Earth-based dune
buggy, albeit with the unique ability to neatly fold away. The
vehicle
featured
simultaneous front and rear steering and steel-mesh tires
mounted on
wheels
that were each driven by their own separate motors. Power was
supposedly
provided by an array of batteries mounted on the front end of
the rover.

Since no one really knew what kind of a
vehicle
would be
required to drive on the Moon, early conceptual rovers ran the
gamut
from
vehicles with massively oversized wheels to those propelled by
tank-like tracks
to Archimedean screws that would be able to burrow through the
lunar
dust like
mechanical moles. Luckily, through extensive research and
development,
the
Apollo team was able to deduce exactly which design components
would
allow the
rovers to operate with maximum efficiency on the lunar terrain.

Or so the story goes. In reality, the rover
team
obviously
had no time to do much at all in the way of research,
development and
testing.
The Soviets, on the other hand, took the development of their
Moon
vehicle very
seriously – seriously enough to spend an entire decade
researching,
developing
and relentlessly fine-tuning every aspect of their robotic
rover.

Dubbed the Lunokhod (the English
translation of
which is
“Michael Jackson” … err, wait a minute, make that “Moonwalker”),
the
Soviet
rover was an engineering marvel that was outfitted with an array
of
both still
and television cameras as well as a wide assortment of testing
equipment,
including an X-ray spectrometer, an X-ray telescope, soil
testing
instruments,
an astrophotometer, a laser retroreflector, a fluorescence
spectrometer, and a
magnetometer.

Lunokhod II, deployed in January of 1973,
some
thirty-seven
years ago, to this day holds the record for having traversed
further on
an
extraterrestrial body (about 23 miles) than any other robotic
rover –
considerably further than America’s two Mars Pathfinder vehicles
combined.

So serious were the Soviets about testing
their
rover
that, in the summer of 1968, they built a secret Lunodrom
(Moondrome)
in the
remote village
of Shkolnoye.
Spanning some
two acres, the Moondrome featured craters up to 50 feet in
diameter and
fake
lunar rocks of all shapes and sizes. It would have been,
needless to
say, an
excellent place to create fake Moon photos and television
footage –
though
conventional wisdom, of course, holds that Soviet scientists and
American
scientists didn’t play well together in those days.

It’s hard though not to conclude that NASA
basically
appropriated the lunar rover research done by the Soviets as
their own.
According to a French documentary (Tank on the Moon), the
Soviets did
indeed spend many long years researching all the various means
of
locomotion
that NASA claimed to study as well. And after doing so, Russian
engineers (led
by Alexander Kemurdjian, who NASA later consulted with on its
Pathfinder
project) came up with many of the same key design elements that
would
be
utilized on NASA’s lunar rovers, such as the mesh tires and the
independently
powered wheels.

The Lunokhod vehicles had eight wheels,
each
with its own
independent motor, suspension and brake. The rovers were
‘driven’ by a
five-man
team here on planet Earth, using panoramic images beamed back in
real-time to
guide the robotic vehicles. The design team had developed a
special
lubricant
that would perform in a vacuum and they had enclosed each wheel
motor
in a
pressurized housing. The vehicle’s batteries recharged via a
collection
of
solar cells on the inside of the craft’s lid, which was kept
open
during the
lunar day. During the frigid lunar night, the rover hibernated,
kept
warm by an
internal radioactive heat source.

Lunokhod I set down on the Moon on November
17,
1970, just
a few months before NASA took possession of the first
mission-ready
lunar
rover. When that first rover allegedly arrived on the Moon eight
months
later,
in July of 1971, Lunokhod I was still traversing the lunar
landscape.